Ep. 37 – Effective Quiet Time Guide: A Peek Into My Personal Practice

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Question: Do you have a quiet time routine? Yes or No? If yes, what specific difference has it made in your life? Leave me a comment below.

Ep. 37 Transcripts: Effective Quiet Time Guide: A Peek Into My Personal Practice

[Intro Beat]

Welcome again to Like Jesus Podcast. This is Olu Sobanjo and I’m very glad to be speaking with you again today. I’m doing this alone today because my husband is away so we are not able to do this together. But I’m sure it’s going to be a wonderful time so let’s get into it.

In this episode, I’m going to be showing you how to have an effective quiet time every day; how to get the most out of your time with God. I discovered that many people get frustrated the moment you start talking about having a quiet time; not because they don’t like to hear from God but due to the past experiences, struggles and failures in this area of their life. They feel stressed because they have no idea how to get the most out of their time with God. I can tell you that personally, I’ve also gone for a night vigil. I prayed all night asking God for strength to avoid taking this wrong step and the following day, I took the same step that I prayed all night against. Another reason why you need to do this well i.e. to have good quality, effective quiet time is that many times our agenda tends to pile up quickly. Before you know it, you’ve added so much again to your schedule and you’re running from pillar to post again. As much as you’re trying to declutter all the time, you still find yourself piling so much on top of yourself. But when you spend time to be with the Lord, He has a way of helping you remove things that are not supposed to be there. Then, you find the strength to say No again and you are able to get back on track. So it’s very important for us to spend time with God and it’s also very important that we make sure that it’s actually an effective quiet time that we are having and not just another chore.

How can I have an effective quiet time? How can I get the most out of my time with God?

In order to answer these questions, I have tried to categorize them under the Why, the When, the Where and the How.

So, let’s get into it.

The first point here which is the most important part of this idea is the Why. Why am I doing this? You see, God is your Father and He is the sovereign God – Creator of the heavens and the earth. He’s the one that knows why He brought you here. We’ve discussed this over and over again on this podcast but I believe we can’t overemphasize the fact that we need to hear from God. He can see. Someone said that “God is the one that has the bird eye view.” He’s looking down from heaven, He can see everyone and He knows why He brought everyone here. He also knows the full picture He’s trying to create on earth and He knows your own specific reason and what part you’re going to play in the whole agenda. So, we must spend the time to know all these.

If you know your Why and your Why is so important to you, you’ll gradually begin to see that distractions and other reasons why it’s hard to actually get this done, will start moving out of the way. That’s why the Why is very important and you must accept your Why. The reason why I’m saying you should do this is to know God’s purpose for your life. When you know His purpose for your life, you’ll live a fulfilled life every day and not just run the rat race.

Now, the next point that I have there is the When. If you’re asking when it’s likely that you have a lot of responsibilities already and you’re wondering what time of the day you have to add this to. Many times you wonder, “I’m so busy, where am I going to find another time to do all these that you’re asking me to do?” Well, you see, I’ve tried to study many great people over the years, including Christians and Non-Christians and I’ve noticed that successful people mostly have something in common. They reserve the first part of their day to focus, meditate or pray. The Lord Jesus Himself woke up early in the morning. The Bible talks about how He woke up early in the morning and went into the mountains and He prayed. When He was here, He was God but He knew He still needed to connect with God in order to achieve His purpose so He went out early in the morning and He did it. When you know your Why, you’re going to realize that you really need to put effort into making it work because it’s a higher priority in your life. That may mean having some bedtime routine. Some people have a shower, put their phones away 30 mins before, whatever it’s going to be. Some turn off the lights, wear something nice and fluffy… I even heard somebody say, he wears something not so comfortable to go to bed because, for him, he wants to wake up when it’s time to wake up and he doesn’t want to feel like, “Oh, it’s so cozy. I don’t want to wake up…” Whatever it’s going to mean for you, you may need to add that into your bedtime routine so that it’s a little easier for you when it’s time to wake up. You may need to have a serious discussion with members of your family especially somebody that may have the tendency of keeping you awake. You may be able to discuss with them and say, “At this point, I’d like to be doing this. Can you work with me? Can you help me to achieve this…” When you make it not just your priority and you are able to communicate it to the members of your family, it’d help you a great deal to be able to achieve what you’re trying to do. You may also need to find a way to learn how to say No to some time wasters that still keep you up late at night, whatever that is and gracefully start trying to sleep early.

However, when you have a little child, say you have a nursing child or you have a toddler around and they don’t have a routine yet, it may be a bit harder at this stage of your life. That’s okay. That’s why you may choose another convenient time of the day when you can have full attention; when you can focus fully on God. There was a time in my life that I used to do my quiet time in my car. I’d drop off the children at school and drive to my office. I won’t park right in front of the office rater, I’d park away from the office so that nobody would see me, greet me and wonder what I’m doing. I’d park far away and I’d spend some time to pray, worship and have my quiet time. When I’m done, I’d drive back closer to the office and walk in. I used to do this on the bus, in the conference room, at any time of the day. Whenever I’m able to have a little bit of privacy, I put it in. At least for you in this stage of your life, it’s a temporary thing. Gradually, you may be able to trust God for the next stage to be better. As this quiet time becomes effective, you will soon start having it great and the zeal to prioritize it will also increase. You may actually find some other time that you can rearrange in order to make it possible. So if you want to change, the best would be to set your alarm 30 mins to an hour each day, earlier than the time you usually woke up before. You go to bed early and wake up earlier. For me, it’s at 5 am and it works well. You should find the time that works for you.

The next one is the Where. I already talked a little bit about that in the When. The easiest place for you to be alone is what you are looking for at this point. A place with minimal interruption. If it means it’s in your room, closet, washroom, home office, car… wherever it’s going to be. Some people even mix it. There were times I’d actually mix it with my exercise in the morning. So, you’d actually get out of the house. My husband does this a lot. He goes out of the house to do his walk or run on the exercise machine and he mixes it but of course, not on a daily basis does he do that. Sometimes, you want to multitask. You can do that. You can even do it in the washroom. It’s also called multitasking people! Multitasking! Wherever it’s perfect for you is great.

The next and the main portion of this episode today is the How. The question is how do I get an effective quiet time? In order to get the most of your time with God, you need to focus on your heart. To get the most out of this session, out of this time alone with God, your heart needs to be right. The aim of this point is to dethrone yourself and to enthrone God. I’d say that again. The aim is to dethrone yourself and to enthrone God. The way to do this is that you’re going to clear your mind of any form of negativity – any wrong, anything that people have done wrong to you and that you do to somebody, any pain, frustrations, disappointment; whatever it is that is not good, pleasant, honorable, you remove it. Songs help here because what you are trying to do is you’re trying to dethrone yourself; you’re trying to make yourself come below God so worship songs will help you to remember that “I’m not the one in charge. I’ve to put God first. I forgive that person. I let go of that hurt because I want God to be the final say…” As you’re doing this, you’re coming boldly to the throne of Grace. You’re not coming in your own name. You’re coming in the name of Jesus. Now, remember the aim here is to enthrone the Father and this helps God to know that you really want to depend on Him and hear from Him. For me, this takes about 10-15 mins depending on where I’m at and of course, it can be more at other times depending on the stage that I’m at and issues that I’m dealing with. So, take your time and enjoy this stage of dethroning yourself and enthroning God.

The next stage of the How is the study stage. At this stage, it’s the point where I read and the main resource that I have here is the Bible. However, I use devotionals also. They are very useful but ultimately, what I want is to hear from God. I want to hear God speak to me. I want to look through the resources that God has made available to me. So, you may take the time to meditate on what He says after you’ve read a portion of the scriptures or a portion the devotional then a portion of the scriptures. This is not the time that I spend the time to read the whole chapter of the Bible but if that’s what you’re doing, that’s fine as well. You just want to focus on the fact that you want God to speak to you. Okay?

This is a very crucial time and God may just use any of these things to speak to you. If you’re just starting this out, don’t worry if you feel you’re not hearing God at the beginning. You’ll soon start noticing that the greatest part of the day is this part of your day. You’ll soon start to hear God talk to you, not just during your quiet; the aim is to have God talk to you all day. So, you start with the attitude of waiting on God to speak and then it doesn’t end there. It continues all day. Depending on the time that I have, sometimes I will even add a portion of whichever book I’m reading at the time. Also, depending on the time where I just need more – I need someone else’s opinion or idea, I bring the wisdom that God has given other people into my quiet time and then, I hear God and get it clearer. They come in very handy. It helps you to understand what God is saying to you. If there is no time, reading other books would be scheduled for later in the day.

The next portion of my time with God is the journal part. That’s the time that I write. This is very crucial because if I don’t write, my mind is not completely in it. When you are writing, you get more of your senses involved in what you’re doing. Personally, I have some questions that I’ve compiled for myself at this stage of my life that I actually use and I answer these question every single day. It helps to not just have to write aimlessly. These questions help me to focus and they help me to get the most out of my time with God. I’ll be sending these questions to everyone on my mailing list this week. It’s a very good tool and it may just be very useful to you. You may be able to take one or two things from it. So, if you’re not registered or rather signed up on my website, go to olusobanjo.com and fill the form providing your name and email address in the spaces provided. Between the next 2-3 weeks, everybody that signs up would get that in their mailbox. I didn’t create it. I got the information from different people and I’ve compiled it to work for me so you may need to add questions to it or subtract from it. But, I find that this really helps me at this stage in my life and questions like, What am I grateful for? What did I learn yesterday that I won’t want to forget? and several other different questions like that. So, you ask them. Usually, for me, it takes like 5-10 minutes, more on the 5 minutes area. Sometimes, I have a lot to do so I write a lot down. Generally, this will really help you to journal and you may even use some of the information that you write down for other projects in the future because it’s good to go back to what you’ve written. It’s a way to see your growth path.

The last portion of my time alone with God is the time when I pray. I spend more time to pray. I try to make sure that I have at least 15-20 minutes of the total time to pray. It may be more or a little less. That’s the time when I wait on God, I listen some more and I pray. This is another very crucial time. This is when I take the time to pray in the Holy Spirit. This is when I ask for specific prayer points. I’m able to pray for others at this point. I also wait to hear what God is saying to me. I allow the Holy Spirit to direct me. Like I said, I want this portion to be much so if it’s a day that I’m not pressed on time, I can even expand this portion a lot more. So that’s it. This is what I do.

Again, the first stage for the How is that you dethrone yourself and enthrone God. Then you study, journal and then you pray. And when you start trying this, I can assure you that no one would beg you to have your quiet time. Your days will be great even in the middle of a big challenge, you will know that you are not alone. Even when you are very scared, you will know that you are not alone. God will begin to give you the confidence and the strength you need for each day and for your purpose for life. So whether it’s knowing God’s plan and purpose in the area of knowing who to marry, what career path to take, which area of town to settle, or the extreme cases of whether or not you should quit your job and go to the mission field, you will begin to get clarity on what to do as you begin to have an effective quiet time with the Lord.

Alright! This is the point where I throw it back to you.

Do you have a quiet time routine? Yes or No? If yes, what specific difference has it made in your life?

Let’s pray.

Father, we just trust you that you’ll continue to guide us and help us. For everyone that is working hard to improve their time with you and get the most out of the time that is spent with you, Lord I ask that you will help them. I ask Holy Spirit that you will empower each person to get the most out of what they have with you in the name of Jesus. And if there are any other challenges that people have that I wasn’t able to address, Holy Spirit I trust that you will help them and you will address this in their heart, in the name of Jesus. I give you all the Glory and I pray that this week will be a fantastic week for everyone, in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Alright! Go back to the website olusobanjo.com and answer the question:

Do you have a quiet time routine? Yes or No? If yes, what specific difference has it made in your life?

Till next week, continue to enjoy God. I’ll talk to you again soon. Bye.